Hundreds of kilometres south-east of the French mainland you can still find some of the last
wild landscapes in the Mediterranean.
A stunning spine of rugged, often snow-capped mountains, long winding ribbons of unspoiled,
sun drenched coast.
It's no wonder they call Corsica the "Isle of Beauty".
Corsica's remote terrain has bred a tough, self-reliant community and in the untamed
hills and valleys, hunting is a Corsican tradition.
Some of these men have hunted together for decades, today they're chasing wild boar.
In Corsica the hunt of the wild boar is a custom which has lasted for generations.
It allows us to get together, to have a good time and to keep our friendships, because
above all, the hunt is about friendship".
Hunting is of course hit and miss and while these men will spend the morning without bagging
a prize, Corsica remains a renowned destination for hunters from all over Europe.
But it's famous for something else as well. The island is the murder capital of Europe,
with a homicide rate seven times that of mainland France.
"We can no longer count how many people have died. We don't have accurate figures for the
number of murders or attempted murders. It's huge".
Based in the capital Ajaccio, Paul Ortoli is a crime reporter for Corsica's daily newspaper.
Corsica has always had a high
murder rate, but Ortoli says that more and more high profile victims are being killed.
A sign,
he believes, that the criminals think they're untouchable.
"The more violent the murder, the greater the impact. The more high-profile figures
are murdered, the more we have the feeling that the mafia is powerful".
The recent hit list includes some of the island's more powerful figures. Jean-Luc Chiappini,
Mayor and National Parks President, gunned down in his car while leaving the airport.
Dominique Domarchi, Mayor and Advisor to Corsica's Chief Executive, shot at his front door.
Jacques Nacer, President of the South Corsican Chamber of Commerce, assassinated on a main
street of Ajaccio.
And late last year, the murder in broad daylight of Corsica's most famous lawyer, Antoine Sollacaro.
"What you feel at the time is terror - something which stuns and paralyses you at the same time.
Like his father, Paul Sollacaro is a defence lawyer. Father and son often worked together
in the criminal courts of Corsica and Southern France. Paul Sollacaro is still coming to
terms with his father's brutal murder.
"You're in shock and it's like living in a bad dream or rather a nightmare. To tell you
the truth you can't believe it. You can't believe it".
Antoine Sollacaro was killed one morning last October. The lawyer was heading to work in
downtown Ajaccio. As usual, he drove from his home via the local garage to buy a newspaper
but on that day, a motorbike was tailing him.
At the garage, the motorbike passenger jumped off and shot Sollacaro in the head, firing
another volley to make sure. It was a professional hit.
Crime reporter, Paul Ortolli was on the scene within minutes.
"When we realised it was Antoine Sollacaro, we said to ourselves that we'd gone to another level,
because Antoine Sollacaro wasn't just a lawyer - he represented the government and the rule of law
We wondered how far this spiral of violence would go.
We had the impression that anyone could get killed at any time and anywhere".
Also on the scene was Corsica's top local politician, Dominique Bucchini
"Unfortunately we are the most criminal region in Europe.
It's appalling. It affects everyone.
That's enough. That's enough. We must be able to live peacefully and with each other's differences".
The murder of Antoine Sollacaro sent shockwaves across Corsica and mainland France.
"When my father died the violence exploded
into the face of French people in all the country, that the violence was there before,
every day, and the French people realised Corsica was a very violent place".
"So who do you think is responsible for your father's death?"
I think the situation we're in in Corsica is serious. It is complicated. We're in a mindset of assassinations,
because the criminal world is re-organising the world of organised crime in Corsica
Many believe Antoine Sollacaro was the victim of feuding gangs.
There were 19 murders last year and now we're up to 14 murders.
In Ajaccio the most symbolic and high profile murders are committed - Antoine Sollacaro
and Jacques Nacer... "
The theory is the criminal lawyer, through his work, had become too close to one faction.
"What we can say is that Antoine Sollacaro, as a lawyer, could be thought as close to
some criminals and by targeting him, a symbol was being killed and that gang was being targeted".
"The death of Sollacaro was clearly a sign that there are currently major tensions
between different gangs which are emerging at the moment".
Gabriel Culioli is a writer and close observer of Corsica's crime scene.
"With the end of the older generation of criminals
a younger generation is emerging who cares less about clashing with the state.
To get power they're prepared to kill in a much more brutal way than their elders. That's the difference".
"Since 2008, organised crime has re-formed. There have been fights between rival gangs
over the economic interests of business, control of drugs, control of illegal gambling, gaming
rooms in Paris... They are fighting over their share of the pie".
The biggest money spinner on Corsica now is land and property.
In the tourist playgrounds on Corsica's coastline, the sun, the sand and island charm attract
millions of visitors every year - but with the tourists come huge development pressures.
Property values have exploded in the last decade and where there's money to be made,
you'll find Corsica's criminal gangs.
So the underworld - that is, organised crime -
is interested in all these places and they're putting pressure so they can eventually monopolise
the land, even farming land, and then develop it - with or without the agreement of a certain
number of elected officials".
The booming property market is also the ideal machine for laundering dirty money.
The money is invested in property and it becomes entirely legal.
You can't trace it back anywhere. The money becomes legal and becomes part of Corsica's mainstream economy"
It's Corsica's mayors who are at the sharp end of the pressure - they have the power
to say yes or no to developments. Today a group of officials from the island's north
are gathering to talk business and swap stories. Among them is Ange-Pierre Vivoni, a mayor
for 20 years. Vivoni thinks the influx of fast money has changed Corsica.
"We went from the 20th century to the 21st without a transition.
Every continent, every island in the world has had some kind of transition.
It didn't happen here. We went from living as peasants to being obsessed by gain".
With so much money at stake, being a mayor has become a dangerous job.
In the past few yearsa number have been shot dead. Ange-Pierre Vivoni says mayors are under constant pressure
to give people what they want.
"The threats are pretty simple. Sometimes they want to kill you because you are clearly
in the way. We annoy certain people. Then it's phone calls... you never know who's on
the end of the line.
But if those threats scare you, if those threats make you back down, that's when you've lost
the battle".
Over the years Mayor Vivoni has survived some close calls - including arson and bombing
attempts.
"They burnt down my family home. It really hurt me. I felt I was being destroyed within.
I felt destroyed. I saw my childhood go up in smoke over three hours
although it felt like three centuries. They blew up my cars.
There was even one bomb under my car that didn't explode. If that one had exploded, I would have ended up in Italy.
What keeps Mayor Vivoni going is love for his country. For centuries his family's home
has been here on Cap Corse, the northern tip of the island.
"And what we want to do is to protect these wild landscapes, these landscapes which have remained as God made them.
If they come here they'll make it into a Cote D'azur
and if they did that it would be really catastrophic".
It's largely untouched, but not for want of trying. Thanks to his strict zoning laws,
horses not hotels, enjoy the sea view. Vivoni takes us to a place once earmarked for 400
villas and a huge marina development - a project he blocked.
"So this Italian wanted to build here and there on 30 hectares
and build a port down there and bring people here from Italy and elsewhere. They wanted
to bring 400 or 500 people here. But I didn't want that. For me, it's much prettier like
this - nicer than having a marina here and 400 villas, or mini villas".
"Were you threatened or were you offered a bribe with this project here?"
"He said he'd be able to 'sort it out' with me.
That meant we could find some sort of solution. His solution would have been to give me something
or other. But regardless Ange-Pierre Vivoni wasn't prepared to make a deal".
Back at his office, Mayor Vivoni is concerned about some recent night-time visitors.
At 2 am in the morning, the Mayor's neighbour was woken by a strange noise.
"... he went out and he saw in front of my window two people... camouflaged, hooded..."
The ongoing threats won't weaken Mayor Vivoni's resolve but they've taken a toll on his family.
His first wife left him because of the pressure.
"But she was the one who felt threatened, when she received phone calls telling her
"Tonight your husband won't come back. You'll find him in the morgue." "We'll come, and
you and your children will pay for what he says". So of course, a wife and her children
are affected by all that. I often came back home to find them barricaded in.
It hurts, that kind of thing... because afterwards you wonder if you were right".
A long and violent separatist struggle over decades has left a bitter legacy in this untamed
island. But even those involved in that deadly conflict are shocked by the scale and brutality
of today's many murders.
We're heading north to meet some brave locals who've decided to try to do something about
the violence. As if on cue, we hear there's been an assassination along our route. It
happened right here on the main road.
"This is the scene of one of the latest killings here on Corsica. A 22 year old man
was found on the road here next to his car with a trauma wound to his head. Initially
it was assumed he'd had a car accident, but when they did an autopsy, they found he'd
actually been shot in the head, the latest in a long line of victims of Corsican violence".
The port town of Bastia is the capital of Corsica's north.
Here, the violence has reunited a group of veteran activists. 18 years ago women from
across the island united to protest against the violence. They called themselves "Protest
for Life". The recent murders have reignited their outrage.
"The man two days ago was 22.
He was gunned down like a rabbit. When he was on his way home in a car he was shot.
Like a rabbit in a hunt.
You don't get used to it. You don't get used to death. And yet,
after fifteen years we still tell ourselves, we should be used to it. It never stops. There've
been hundreds of deaths over the last fifteen years. And most haven't been solved".
Back in the late 1990s these women organised street marches and lobbied politicians. French
leaders seemed to be listening, and promised to take Corsica's problems seriously but spokeswoman
Paule Persie thinks nothing has changed.
"Do we have to take to the street once more to say we've had enough?
Fifteen years of saying 'enough'. Well, that's enough! Something else is needed. We need action
But just two days later, a few hundred metres down the road, Corsica's violent reality strikes again
"We've just been told there's been a double murder here in Bastia in the centre of the
town just a short distance from our hotel. So ah,
well you can see the crowd starting to gather here... there are a few police. And we believe
it's in this building across the road. Now we don't know the details but two people are
dead. Yet another example of the violence that afflicts this island".
This time it's not a gangland killing but a murder suicide. A man shot his partner with
a hunting rifle and then killed himself. Almost mundane deaths in a place conditioned to the
more dramatic gangland executions.
In desperation, the women have gone to the very top for help. They've written to the
French President demanding action - a crackdown on crime and more money for a justice system
they say is failing. But Paule Persie is not hopeful.
"The French Government is not interested in Corsica.
We are nothing. There are 300,000 of us.
So that's why they leave us in the hands of the mafia. That's how you can kill in Corsica
without any reaction".
Back in Ajaccio, investigations into the Sollacaro murder continue. The police have had a breakthrough.
"Three people have charged and there are two protected witnesses. As we know, the inquiry
is not complete".
They've charged three men in connection with the motorbike used in the killing.
The men are connected to an Ajaccio gang.
"Police sources say the investigation is not over. They still don't have the group who
carried out the assassination, or the boss - the one who ordered the hit on Antoine Sollacaro".
But this is not enough to reassure the victim's son, Paul Sollacaro.
"When there are 20 or 30 deaths a year and the assassinations are not resolved, and justice
doesn't provide a solution to these bloody affairs and families are in despair,
and you accumulate a lot of hate and anger, in a murderous atmosphere like this, I think
it can only get worse.
Sometimes I think of packing my bags and maybe going to Australia.
Save up and leave to get some sun in Australia... learn how to surf. Why not?"
Mayor Vivoni is not going anywhere. His home is here where generations of his family have
been buried in this crypt. He feels bound to honour a promise he made to his family
when first elected.
"Your name is Vivoni, it's ours too".
"We have always carried it with humility and dignity".
"It's your turn to continue to keep it clean." I promised both of them - and my father who
is no longer with us - that I would continue to carry our name with dignity.
I have chosen this path, but perhaps I didn't expect that it would be as difficult as it has been.
But I haven't lost the faith yet. The flame still burns".